"Bomber" Harris or "Butcher" Harris? Keith Lowe, author of Inferno, an exemplary analysis of the week-long bombing of Hamburg which killed more than 40,000, masterminded by Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris, comes no closer to settling the argument of whether he was hero or villain.
Harris' detractors will
argue that he had no notion of the hell he visited on the civilian population of Germany, if, indeed, he actually cared.
His defenders will claim that cowing a civilian population was as important as destroying war factories responsible for all methods of destruction, whether shells or U-boats, as was the case in Hamburg.
While the bombing of Dresden in 1945 still - and rightly - occasions debate on the necessity or otherwise of total war, the bombing of Hamburg two years earlier is of equal importance, if less discussed.
It is to Lowe's credit that he uses material both from members of the RAF and the American airforce and those on the receiving end of one of Word War II's most determined aerial bombardments to present a picture of atrocious human suffering, without seeking to be judgmental.
The most poignant stories come in asides. A small boy, removed from Hamburg when the rest of his family has died, is stopped by an official in the town to which he has been exiled and is asked what is in his two bags: one contains the remains of his pet rabbit, the other the charred remains of his sister.
Nothing quite prepares you for the photographs of line after line of victims, neatly arrayed, or of block after block of houses, only their outer walls standing.
* Published by Penguin
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